Companion

Karen loses her sight in a sudden accident and arrives in the isolated village of Ash Boulder with Jeff, her guide dog and her only companion. Thirty years ago Eleanor Blackwood was wrongly condemned as a witch there because of her race and cruelly killed, and her curse is still breathing in the place. I wanted the tension to build step by step out of a contrast: a protagonist who cannot see, a companion who cannot speak, and a curse that closes in on them both. The film concentrates on a fear made of sight, sound and space. Sound design carries the presence and the pressure of something that stays invisible, so that the audience feels the horror in the body rather than watching it from outside. If you can, please watch with headphones or earphones. Generative AI is used here as a creative medium that completes the look of the film, not as a shortcut in production. The strange textures and unreal images that AI produces were essential in giving visual form to Eleanor's curse and to the ominous mood of Ash Boulder, which would be hard to build by conventional means. I hope the film brings you a raw psychological fear, and a sense of how far AI is widening the experience of digital cinema. Thank you.